Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Multicultural counseling group presentation preparation

Multicultural counseling appears to be another integrative approach to counseling. The chapter on multicultural counseling in the textbook comes before the chapters on counseling theories. I now see that the textbook emphasizes developing an eclectic, individual approach; every chapter beyond chapter 6 addresses diversity issues. I'm one of a small group of three doing a presentation on the last day of class. Appropriately,in our planning meetings we're experiencing multicultural issues in communication; we come from different backgrounds, and there may some linguistic issues in understanding.
Even though the chapter repeats some information, there seems a lot to pack into an hour. We met today and worked out an outline. I'm taking the last section (not intentionally), and will probably focus on multicultural competency. Evaluating counseling theories sounds redundant -- like applying theory to theories, though I can see the connection: if we are to be grounded in counseling theories, especially one counseling theory (as suggested in the section on developing an individual approach), we need to know how to assess these for appropriateness, This chapter is also a reminder that counseling is not following a formula, but adapting knowledge and skills to help clients.

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